Dr. G: Medical Examiner - Season 1, Episode 4 - The Mystery of the Haunted Crossing - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[OMINOUS MUSIC] [THEME MUSIC] NARRATOR: A grisly discovery at a railroad crossing
marks the beginning of a mystery that will go unsolved for years. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: All I had is some decomposed muscle.
It was pretty much all skeletonized. NARRATOR: Ghost stories, witchcraft, and a little girl
crying murder muddy the waters in a case where even the most basic questions are puzzles.
DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: We didn't see a penis. We didn't see a vagina. There was no internal organs.
You couldn't see the sex. NARRATOR: Can Dr. G find the evidence needed to put a killer behind bars?
Then Henry Clark drops dead moments after coming home from the store. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: The groceries
were still in the plastic bag. He never put them away. NARRATOR: Were warning signs overlooked?
DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: We've got some funny marks here that look like a needle puncture marks in his left arm.
NARRATOR: And could his death have been prevented? Altered lives, baffling medical mysteries,
shocking revelations, these are the everyday cases of "Dr. G, Medical Examiner."
When Dr. G begins work on an autopsy, she's often driven by a sense of responsibility to the living.
Again, I'm so sorry. NARRATOR: But medical examiners must also use their expertise
to help the deceased themselves, to right a wrong, to bring a killer to justice.
DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: The core function of medical examiner's to always be suspicious that there's not
foul play involved in the death, that a homicide isn't being missed. That's going to be our core function.
But it's really kind of why we exist. I mean, honestly, if it was just to diagnose
heart disease in the community, we probably wouldn't be funded. I mean the bottom line.
NARRATOR: That is precisely the service Dr. G was called on to perform in 1995 while she was serving as a medical examiner
in Bear County, Texas. The investigation launched that summer became known as The Case
of the Haunted Rail Crossing. In August of that year at a rural San Antonio railway crossing, a dog picks up a scent.
Investigating, it finds a pile of bones, human bones. Under the searing heat of the Texas sun,
the skeleton is almost completely decomposed. THERESE HUNTZINGER: A dog had actually
picked up one of the skeletal bones and brought it to the owner of the property up on the porch.
NARRATOR: Realizing what his dog has brought home, the owner immediately calls the police.
The body, or what's left of it, is carefully collected by the field investigators
of the Bear County morgue. Taking care to photograph the exact position of the bones
and then duplicating that placement in the body bag, they are then brought to Dr. G, and they
come with a strange story. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: Initially we got a call of a partially skeletonized body
out by the railroad tracks. This is a very special area in that this railroad track
area was felt to be haunted. NARRATOR: Of course, a local superstition doesn't concern Dr. G. The scarcity of remains do.
DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: I do some initial examination when all I have is some decomposed muscle.
It was pretty much all skeletonized. It starts very oddly in an oversized man's t-shirt,
I think some knit shorts of some type. NARRATOR: Dr. G's first order of business
is to try to identify the corpse's age and sex and then match those facts to reports of missing persons.
As a person ages, the plates that make up certain skeletal structures like the pelvis
and the humerus fuse. By looking at the thickness of the fused areas, Dr. G makes an educated guess at the age of the remains.
Relatively young. I knew that, around 15 years old, but the sex was very difficult possibly
because they were so young. NARRATOR: Dr. G hopes that more physical remains are waiting
to be found, remains that could help determine the sex and ID the partial body lying in her morgue.
She herself heads out to the supposedly haunted tracks. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: So I actually
went back out to the scene. It's kind of like "Deliverance." There was a kind of-- you know, on the porch
with these big dogs. And it was actually the big dogs that discovered this body because they brought the bones back to the guy on the porch
that one day. So I'm in the car of my investigator, and the dogs surround us. And I'm thinking, oh, boy they've already
test tasted human flesh. I'm not coming out. So finally the guy from the porch pulls the dogs away from the car.
We go out, look for some more teeth-- I was able to find those-- and hair and brought those back.
NARRATOR: But even with the new evidence, the secret of these bones stay secret.
Dr. G can't be sure how the person died. We clean the bonds up then look very carefully for trauma.
We X-ray and couldn't find any trauma at the bones either. NARRATOR: Very little can be certain
with such partial remains even the body's sex. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: They just didn't have a lot
of good sexual characteristics. This facial features were somewhat ambiguous. No genitalia, that had been decomposed.
We didn't see a penis. We didn't see a vagina. There is no internal organs. You couldn't see the sex.
But we thought the DNA would be a good way to go. Initial examination looked like it was a female to me,
so the autopsy report said-- and it is read as-- the skeleton looks female, but DNA revealed that it was a male.
NARRATOR: Based on skull structure, an artist's sketch hints at what the male victim
may have looked like. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: I actually tried to compare it to some other people who were missing.
Some people came in and said, oh, looks like this person or that person, and none of those
panned out. We don't like it to be any more damaged. So I just sat in our office for a long time.
We didn't identify it. We didn't know who it was. NARRATOR: But some 100 miles away,
a 12-year-old girl in a state youth center thinks she knows who it is. The girl is Sandra Rodriguez, recently
removed from an abusive home. One night she sees a television news story about the discovery
of a dead body. Sandra turns to her roommate casually and reportedly says-- Oh, I bet that's my sister Christie.
My mother murdered her. NARRATOR: Sandra then begins to tell authorities in the shelter
a tale of neglect and abuse that begins over 90 miles southwest of San Antonio in Texas, where she lived with her older sister
Christie, her mother Elsie, and six other adults in a house owned by her mother's cousin Linda.
RUBEN NOLASCO: There's about nine people living there. You're looking at about a 500-, 600-square foot home.
No doors. You have curtains that are used for doors. That house in my opinion needed cleaning from top to bottom.
It needed to be sanitized including the people living there. THERESE HUNTZINGER: Sandra and Christie simply
had no life as young girls. I think abused and neglected for much of their life.
No support. No love at all. EMMET HARRIS: I know that from time to time the children would be so hungry, they'd
have to go down and rummage around the dumpster. And the children did a lot of the shopping for the home,
and by that I mean the cousin would give them the list of what she wanted and they
were ordered to go steal it. NARRATOR: According to their mother's attorney, it was a dysfunctional household.
What's more, according to the authorities, Sandra suggested that her mother Elsie had been under the thumb
of her cousin Linda, who Sandra says had sadistic ideas about disciplining the children.
EMMET HARRIS: If a child ate something or drank something they weren't supposed to do without this cousin's
permission, cousin would make the child consume so many jalapeno peppers that the child would regurgitate
would throw up, vomit. And then the cousin would make the child consume the vomit.
If Elsie committed some sin according to the cause, she would be the subject of similar treatment.
THERESE HUNTZINGER: The physical abuse was immense. It involved everything from burning,
boiling water, scalding burns, just very torturous things, and which included the use of a staple gun.
NARRATOR: Sandra tells the authorities that she suffered deeply from the abuse, but it was her older sister Christie
who always got the worst of it. MIGUEL HERNANDEZ: There was another deal I think where Christie was picked up by a EMS.
She'd been beat in the face, the head, and she was left out in the street in the nude.
And she was hospitalized for some time. She was black and blue. Her entire torso was black and blue.
NARRATOR: At the time, Elsie claimed that her 15-year-old daughter Christie had been beaten up by a boyfriend.
Now Sandra, telling her version of the event, says Christie was in fact beaten by their mother.
Then in the final part of the girl's epic tale, she tells authorities that it was
after another violent incident when her mother beat her sister with a hammer that Christie fell unconscious
and died. Sandra claims she herself was enlisted to help dispose of her sister's body.
RUBEN NOLASCO: They dragged the body outside, and they wash it down with a water hose
and change her clothes, put it in the back seat of the car. And then that's when they proceed to San Antonio
to dump the body. To the actual site, I guess you're looking maybe at two hours.
It's not a coincidence in my opinion that Elsie chose to dump her body at the location
of the railroad tracks, which had been considered in San Antonio folklore to have been haunted,
that these were haunted tracks. I mean, imagine being a 12-year-old, having witnessed your mother kill your sister
and to put her in the back seat of a car and go with her 99 miles with the mother to dump the body.
Go back to that same house to live-- the fear that she had to have been experiencing to know
that she couldn't say anything. NARRATOR: Now removed from the house of horrors for the first time, Sandra is finally talking.
But in a cruel twist, the young girl who police know from their patrols around the neighborhood
has a hard time being taken seriously. THERESE HUNTZINGER: Then you have a police department
that doesn't believe her statement because it's too incredible. It's just-- it's not the kind of thing
you confront or see very often and particularly not in a small town. NARRATOR: Compounding their suspicion,
Sandra's mother and other adults in the house tell police that Sandra is lying. They claim that there was no murder
and that Christie has run away with her boyfriend. Police buy the mother's version of the story.
THERESE HUNTZINGER: They believed that she was lying to cover for her sister Christie.
NARRATOR: Then faced with disbelief and possible retribution from her family, Sandra back pedals.
And I guess about an hour and a half in the interview, Sandra recanted and said that everything that she had said
was just a lie, and she wanted to get her mother in trouble for what she had put her and Christie through.
NARRATOR: What's more, police don't contact Dr. G's morgue because the only body found at the tracks
is male, at least according to the DNA test. So even with the girl's claims, the box of bones in Dr.
G's morgue sits unidentified. Is Sandra's recanted claim a call for help? Will Dr. G be able to tell whether the bones are really
her sister Christie or whether the girl is lying to get back at her mother? DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: The body was dumped
in that exact location where we found this skeleton, and she was around 15. Well, that's a little coincidental.
NARRATOR: And later on "Dr. G, Medical Examiner," Henry Clark doesn't show up for work.
Checking his apartment, his horrified friend discovers why. Can Dr. G tell what happened on Henry's last night?
Nearly two years have passed since Dr. G first tried to identify the skeletonized remains
of a teenager found at a railroad crossing said to be haunted. And for nearly as long, police have
been unable to validate the claim of 12-year-old Sandra Rodriguez, who said her sister was murdered and dumped
by those same tracks. But Sandra now 14 hasn't kept quiet. Encouraged by an aunt, she begins
repeating her accusations to anyone who will listen. Ultimately Texas Department of Public Safety
is called in to aid police. Special juvenile investigator Sergeant Ruben Nolasco
pays another visit to Sandra's family. [KNOCKING] RUBEN NOLASCO: I remember going to Christie's house,
and I spoke with the aunt there. And the feeling that I got was really, a really cold feeling.
You know, you expect to see photos of children. There's not one single picture hanging
on that wall of Christie. So I asked her if she had any photographs. And I'll never forget that she went into the kitchen,
and in one of the cabinets, she pulls out a Bible. And in the Bible, she had a little picture of Christie,
and that's a picture that they gave me. And it just-- I stop and think about it and just--
you know, why would she have a picture of Christie there and nothing, you know, in the living room?
NARRATOR: While the family members still claim that Christie simply ran away, Nolasco starts checking out the details of Sandra's
version of what happened. When he does, the trail leads right to Dr. G's morgue.
Police called. They said we have a girl that says her sister was murdered by the mother and that the body was
brought up to the railroad tracks where supposedly the spirits live. I said, yes, we have a case like that brought in from that area.
And he goes, yes, but I hear, you know, you have a male. I said that's what with the DNA showed,
but it looked like a female. Certainly bring what you have and let's see if we can identify it.
NARRATOR: But Dr. G faces an enormous challenge. Christie had never been taken to a dentist,
so even though Dr. G found teeth with the remains, there is no record to compare them to.
And while Christie had been fingerprinted by police after being arrested for petty theft,
the remains have no flesh, no fingerprints to check. Ironically, when the priceless bit of evidence
does finally surface, it comes from the hospital files started on Christie after an earlier
incident of reported abuse. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: She'd never been to the dentist, which
is the easiest way to identify somebody, but she had been in the hospital not very long before she died,
several months before she died in the hospital from being beaten. And they couldn't find any internal broken bones.
But they did a lot of x-rays looking for them, and that was to my advantage because they
did a lot of skull X-rays. Now I had her skull, and one of the things we can do is match the pattern of the frontal sinuses.
As it turned out, that was the only way we could identify her. NARRATOR: In the human skull, the edging
and shape of the sinus cavities are unique to every individual. The uniqueness of our sinus that exists
is as unique as is a fingerprint or DNA according to the doctor. You can make a positive identification
strictly on that. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: So we took a X-ray of our skull and compared it to the X-ray that was taken of this girl,
and they matched perfectly. NARRATOR: Dr. G has her proof. She is certain that what was found at the railroad
tracks were the remains of Christie Rodriguez. But what about the DNA test? It said the remains are male.
It's a contradiction that could destroy a prosecution's case. The case sat for a long time because I believe
some of the prosecutors were afraid to go ahead prosecute because they felt these were
all problems with the case. NARRATOR: For the case to go to trial, Dr. G would have to explain what went wrong with the DNA test.
DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: Whether it was a tissue mix up, whether it was contamination--
NARRATOR: And how could the blows of a hammer have been fatal if there was no evidence
of broken bones or trauma? Using X-rays of sinus cavity bones, Dr. G has proven that skeletonized remains found
near a fabled haunted railway crossing was in fact the body of a missing possibly murdered
girl, Christie Rodriguez. According to the dead girl's sister, Sandra, Christie died after a beating
at the hands of her own mother. Well, this case is always stuck in my mind. I mean, it was just such a difficult case.
When I heard what the poor girl had to go through in her life, it was very sad. I found it appalling that once the poor girl is dead,
they put her in the back seat and drive her into my jurisdiction to be by those railroad tracks.
NARRATOR: Armed with a positive ID and the accusations from Christie's 14-year-old sister
Sandra the police arrest Elsie Rivera, Christie's mother. During the trial, Elsie admits beating
her daughter with a hammer. But according to her attorney, she was influenced by her cousin Linda.
The cousin and her mother, according to Elsie, were spooky. They dabbled in what some people might refer to as witchcraft.
She was terrified of these people. She felt powerless to do anything about it. NARRATOR: At trial, Sandra adds details
to the account of parental abuse but paints a more complex picture of her mother's assault on her sister.
EMMET HARRIS: Yes, her mother did hit her with a hammer, and her mother went to sleep.
But Christie was still alive, and Christie was not screaming or otherwise visibly in distress.
NARRATOR: Police officers are ordered to arrest cousin Linda as well. But as the investigation proceeds,
the case takes a turn. Authorities have exhausted their leads and can find no other support for bringing
a case against Linda. There was nothing that could be proven against her directly
to show that she either participated in the murder with Elsie or encouraged Elsie to do it.
We simply didn't have that evidence. NARRATOR: Linda would never be charged by police
for any of the alleged abuse. But prosecutors proceeded with their case against Elsie.
As the case approaches trial, Dr. G turns her attention to the prosecution attempting to overcome a forensic roadblock.
The DNA test initially done indicated that the remains were male. That could prove to be a foothold for the defense.
DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: We never figured out what went wrong with that. What happened? We don't know.
There are a lot of possibilities, and I don't have the final answer on that. Was that a bad test?
We know that test was wrong. NARRATOR: To prove the first test was incorrect, Dr. G orders another.
DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: When we did another test later on, she came out as not having a Y chromosome,
that she was a female, xx. NARRATOR: Mother Elsie goes on trial in June 2000. The key witness is Sandra, who testified
that she witnessed the fatal assault and helped dispose of the body. But equally vital on the stand is
Dr. G. Medical examiners have to be both scientists and teachers. They must seek out the medical facts
and then explain them in simple terms to juries of ordinary citizens. Christie's identity is only part of what
Dr. G must prove to the jury. According to Sandra, the only witness to the fatal assault,
Christie was beaten repeatedly with a hammer. So why don't the remains have a single broken bone?
It's a fundamental question that could make or break the prosecution's case. EMMET HARRIS: The skull of Christie had no fracture.
How'd Christie died as a result of the hammer blow from the mother and not have a fractured skull,
I'm not a doctor. I can't tell you that. NARRATOR: Without any internal organs, determining precisely how Christie died
is an impossible question. But incredibly the same hospital admission that generated the X-rays used to identify Christie
comes into play again. That hospital visit months before her murder was also as a result of a severe beating, and it,
too, produced no broken bones. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: And so I had a review very carefully
a previous medical chart to see what kind of injuries she had and compare that to what we found.
And it was very eerie that neither one any bones are broken even though she supposedly
is beaten about the head and about the abdomen. The only thing that they found was this subcapsular
hematoma on the spleen. NARRATOR: The spleen, which sits just below the stomach,
is a fragile organ responsible for cleaning old blood cells from the circulatory system.
The hematoma found by doctors on Christie's spleen was a kind of blood blister that resulted
from her first beating. I certainly don't have any spleen, but I could opine that another blow to the abdomen
certainly could have caused that spleen to rupture. NARRATOR: This final piece of evidence
is just what the prosecution is looking for as a ruptured spleen could most certainly
trigger a fatal scenario. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: If you rupture the spleen, the spleen's going to keep bleeding,
and you can bleed to death internally. Very common way in some of our car accidents
where people can die. The spleen gets torn, and you bleed internally. NARRATOR: After Dr. G's testimony,
the jury is left to weigh the medical evidence. I think the jury understood that you can die from a hammer
without leaving any marks on the bones. And I was very pleased that I think they understood all that.
NARRATOR: The jury understood it well enough to convict Christie's mother of murder.
THERESE HUNTZINGER: She was sentenced to 99 years in prison. In Texas law, you can either get life or 99 years
is a maximum sentence. In this instance, I thought 99 was a particularly good number,
and that's how many miles she drove exactly to the location where she dumped the body.
NARRATOR: The end of the long saga brings some comfort, but the impact of this emotional case
is not lost on those involved. RUBEN NOLASCO: It's a hard lesson, and unfortunately I had to learn it that way.
But because of that, it made me better at what I do now. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: That case lived with me for a long,
long time until it got resolved, and I'm very thankful for [INAUDIBLE] that she was--
she had the guts enough to take that on and prosecute it. NARRATOR: Coming up, the sudden death of a father of two.
So we see blood where it's not supposed to be here. NARRATOR: What warning does his cause
of death hold for others, when "Dr. G, Medical Examiner" continues. No matter what the circumstances, the end of life
is traumatic. Homicides make headlines, but sudden death often starts out as a mystery.
It's 11:00 AM on a February Monday morning, and the desk of Henry Clark is still empty.
It is not like him to be late, and his boss calls Henry at home. He gets no answer.
Henry Clark is a well-liked car salesman, and the 53-year-old divorced father of two.
Like 2/3 of American adults, Clark is overweight, but he's never been diagnosed with a major illness
and has never voiced any serious complaints about his health. I think over the past 10 years,
I've seen many more obese problems coming through. We're exercising less. We're eating like we're gonna--
you know, we're saving it for the famine, and now we're not exercising. It's just-- you know, it's bound to cause problems.
NARRATOR: After his employer calls and gets no response, Henry's girlfriend lets herself into his apartment.
On the kitchen table, she finds a bag full of groceries yet unopened. And then on the floor near the bed,
she sees Henry half undressed and not breathing. She calls the police. Henry's pronounced dead on the scene.
Without any explanation as to how Henry Clark died, the case becomes the business of the Orange
County Medical Examiner's Office, Doctor G's office. We received a call from the Orlando police department
concerning a young Black male gentleman who collapsed in his apartment, and they requested
the medical examiner investigator to respond to his apartment complex. NARRATOR: Doctor G's field investigator
Jack Cuccia is dispatched to the scene and begins to look for clues with an investigator's trained
eye. JACK CUCCIA: There was nothing that would indicate that we needed to be concerned of any foul play or anything
of suspicious nature. We treated the case as an apparent natural. We just want to make sure that he didn't indulge
in too much alcoholic beverage that perhaps contributed to his death or any type of recent meal
that possibly would be concerned about an apparent choking effect pertaining to this case.
Do I smell Vicks? Oh, you little woosies. NARRATOR: In his investigation, Jack Cuccia
learns that the police have turned up a witness and an important clue. A neighbor informs police that on the previous evening,
she encountered Henry struggling up the stairs to his apartment, his arms full of groceries.
He was dizzy and distressed and complained of a headache. JACK CUCCIA: She assisted him in the apartment
with the groceries, and she left him alone because he apparently stated that he was OK.
NARRATOR: Tragically both Henry and his neighbor were wrong. Henry was in trouble.
But what kind? Jack Cuccia brings the body to the medical examiner's office and checks it in for Dr. G. His report, which will help
Dr. G begin her investigation, is mostly a list of a few details known so far. So what we have is a 53-year-old Black male.
He's divorced. He has a daughter. He's a non-smoker, non-drinker, no history of drug abuse,
no arrests. This alone seems like, you know, clean cut guy. He's already in complete rigor, which
goes along with the muscles in his body have tensed up. That goes along with that he's probably been
there about at least 18 hours. NARRATOR: Dr. G also determines that Henry Clark weighs about 280 pounds.
At a body height of 5 foot 10, that means Henry is technically obese. Did his excess weight contribute to Henry's untimely death?
So let's see. So he's got some nice dress pants on. NARRATOR: Dr. G notes an abrasion on the face.
Little abrasion on his nose. NARRATOR: In addition, lividity, or collected blood in the face,
shows Dr. G that he died face down. Just, you know, gives you little hints. NARRATOR: Dr. G's next discovery is
one that's often associated with sudden death, intravenous drug use. Well, we've got what looks like three little needle
puncture marks in his left arm. So that raises, you know, a little bit of suspicion.
What's going on there? Supposedly no history of illicit drug use. NARRATOR: But according to family and acquaintances,
Henry Clark had no history of drug abuse and was in normal health. It looks like there's a good chance Dr. G will have
to let the internal organs tell the tale of Henry Clark's death. Well, we just need one of those.
Right. NARRATOR: But just before she begins the internal autopsy, she notices something about the thickness of Henry's legs
and decides to measure them. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: When I looked at his legs, they looked asymmetric to me.
They don't look the same size. So we're now measuring it to see if I'm off or if I'm accurate.
And I'm accurate. One was 43.5, and this half is 46. Now one of the things that could be is that he might have--
does this one also has some edema. He might have a blood clot in his leg. And this blood clot might have gone up to his lungs
like a deep vein thrombosis, and that would cause a difference in the size of this leg.
So 43.5 versus 46, that's pretty significant. NARRATOR: In the swollen veins of the legs,
a blood clot forms. It can then break free and travel through the bloodstream to the lungs.
Once the large clot lodges in the lungs, it blocks blood from flowing into the alveoli,
preventing them from picking up oxygen. This lethal blockage of the lungs is called a pulmonary embolism.
We can just kind of think about what it could be from his history of complaining about the headache.
We've got some asymmetric legs going on down here. Maybe it's pulmonary embolism.
The headache had nothing to do with it. Maybe it's just a heart attack. We don't know.
NARRATOR: And the only way for Dr. G to find out would be with an internal exam.
OK, right now we've already cut open the abdomen. I don't see anything too remarkable.
We'll look at each individual organ. NARRATOR: First stop, the heart. Right away Dr. G could see that this heart is abnormal.
This heart is big. It's over 600 grams. Normal heart should be in the upper 300s on him.
Oh, I can tell by just his heart, it looks like he's got high blood pressure. So we've got one little piece of evidence going along with that.
NARRATOR: Under the stress of high blood pressure, the human heart must pump harder and harder
to force the blood through the veins at the proper speed and volume. For the heart, this is like working out at the gym all day
every day. As a result, the heart gradually expands just like a weightlifter's bicep.
But this heart does not hold all the answers. Although it has gotten pumped up to nearly
twice its normal size, there is no sign of a heart attack. Yeah, I looked already.
There was none there. NARRATOR: So what killed Henry Clark? When "Dr. G, Medical Examiner" continues,
Henry's case may serve as a wake up call for the living. It is common, but most of the people make it to the hospital.
[SIRENS WAILING] NARRATOR: 53-year-old Henry Clark complained of a headache while climbing the stairs to his apartment
and as far as the evidence shows died only minutes later. Dr. G has definitively ruled out a heart attack
as the cause of death, but her dissection of Henry Clark's respiratory system is not yet complete.
She must still examine his lungs. Given that one of Henry's legs is 2 and 1/2 inches thicker
than the other, Dr. G suspects that he may have died from a pulmonary embolism, a deadly blood
clot that forms in the legs and travels to the lungs. The fact that Henry Clark is medically obese
is also a risk factor for a pulmonary embolism. But when Dr. G looks at Henry Clark's lungs closely,
she is surprised to find no signs of trouble. Well, his pulmonary arteries appear to be fine,
and I don't think the next interesting thing will be until we get his head. NARRATOR: Henry Clark is becoming a serious puzzle.
He has clear signs of high blood pressure but no sign of heart attack or a blood clot in the lungs.
And there's just one clear symptom he described-- his headache. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: He was having trouble
getting his groceries up to the second floor and complained to his neighbor he was having a headache.
I mean, we don't know why he died. He's just a guy that doesn't look like he's going to the doctor.
We don't know anything about his medical history. NARRATOR: There's only one place left to look,
and if it doesn't have the answers, this death may go unsolved. OK, so he's ready to go for the head.
OK. NARRATOR: Dr. G's assistant, Jeanne Conus, uses the cranial saw to open the skull.
Dr. G then steps in to remove the brain. There at last at the base of the brain is her biggest clue, a pool of blood.
DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: So we see blood where it's not supposed to be here. We're seeing a little bit of blood leaking out,
a hemorrhagic stroke. NARRATOR: Closer examination confirms it, a hemorrhagic stroke.
An artery leading into Henry Clark's brain is weakened from the stress of years of high blood pressure.
Eventually a pinpoint rupture leaks, detouring blood away from its vital mission of carrying
oxygen to the brain. It produces symptoms similar to a brain aneurysm, which is a bleed on the outer portion of the brain caused
by a defect in a blood vessel. OK, I think this case is solved. He's got-- definitely got hypertensive changes.
Normally, I'll say it's a bleed in the brain consistent with hypertension. The bleed is without a doubt his cause of death.
NARRATOR: It is a tragically common event but not always fatal. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: It is common.
It is common, but most of the people make it to the hospital. They have a loved one that sees them having problems.
What makes this man unusual is that he had the hemorrhagic stroke, intracerebral
bleed while he's at home. Nobody saw his symptomatology and didn't rush him to the hospital.
NARRATOR: But there's one left piece to the puzzle. Drug use can sometimes sharply increase blood pressure.
Could the puncture marks on Henry's arms that Dr. G found earlier have something
to do with his fatal stroke? You always have to rule out that he's not on a stimulant
because stimulants like cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine will cause your blood pressure to increase.
And certainly if he was on that type of drug when he had the bleed, we would have
to have said that that played a role because that would have increased his blood pressure.
In this case, he tested negative for any type of drug, so we were very confident that this was a natural death.
NARRATOR: Dr. G will never know the origin of the puncture marks, but with toxicology negative,
she is certain that they are not from drug use. Sadly Dr. G concludes that Henry's high blood pressure
was a simple health problem most likely made lethal by neglect. It's not that the mystery of it-- of why he died.
It's how a little bit of health care could have helped-- really helped this fella.
A little bit health care, a little bit of high blood pressure medicine, instructions
on losing weight and exercising could have really helped this fellow. NARRATOR: Now Dr. G can reconstruct the chain of events
leading to Henry Clark's collapse in his bedroom, events stretching over years. Earlier in his life, possibly when he was quite young,
Henry Clark developed high blood pressure or hypertension. Although it is a common ailment, many of its causes
remain a mystery. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: You don't really know what causes it. It's probably a mix of a lot of things-- genetic
and environmental, environmental meaning things you eat, your lifestyle. His weight certainly played a role.
People who are obese will have higher blood pressure. NARRATOR: Year by year, Henry's high blood pressure
erodes the strength of his blood vessels. Beat by beat, his heart strains against the pressure,
becoming thicker, bigger. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: What happens is over time, there are chronic changes to your small blood vessels
because of the high blood pressure. And what they feel happens in the brain is there's probably
some of those vessels inside the brain have weakened walls because of this chronic high blood
pressure, and eventually weakened walls or bulge out and bleed. NARRATOR: On the night he returns from the grocery store,
these years of invisible pressure finally reach their most dangerous point. Henry Clark doesn't know it as he climbs the stairs,
but his headache is killing him. An artery at the base of his brain bursts, and blood slowly hemorrhages out,
depriving the brain of oxygen. While undressing in his bedroom, Henry Clark collapses and never
regains consciousness. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: High blood pressure is a silent killer.
He didn't even know he had it. And yet all of a sudden, you can have this unbelievably
devastating effect from something you didn't even know you had. NARRATOR: It is an end that came too soon
for a tragically simple reason. If there's a lesson to be learned from this case,
it's get your checkup. Make sure you know what your blood pressure is because it is a silent killer.
NARRATOR: For Dr. G, Henry Clark is symbolic of a problem with health in America.
DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: Here's the problem with obesity. With all these really morbidly obese people,
their hearts are huge. It's a tremendous pressure on your heart because you've got the heart of a normal person inside of you,
and then all of a sudden there's miles and miles of extra blood vessels. NARRATOR: It's a problem on which
Dr. G has a unique and chilling perspective. DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA: I've never seen an obese old, old person.
If you're really morbidly obese, you're not going to make it to old age. You have a tremendous number of complications
associated with that obesity besides the hypertension-- the elevated cholesterol, the heart disease,
increased risks of all sorts of different kinds of cancer. They just don't make it to old age.
[THEME MUSIC PLAYING] Atlas.

In August of 1995, when Dr. G worked in Texas, a pile of human bones was found at a supposedly haunted railroad crossing. Dr. G was able to determine the age but not the sex.

A Florida medical examiner takes viewers through puzzling cases while explaining procedures and conclusions.

Brief Summary

Dr. G investigates a murdered girl and a man who died from a stroke linked to high blood pressure.

Key points

The Haunted Rail Crossing. A grisly discovery at a railroad crossing marks the beginning of a mystery.
Sandra's Shocking Claim. A 12-year-old girl claims her mother murdered her sister and dumped the body.
The DNA Dilemma. DNA tests indicate the remains are male, complicating the prosecution's case.
Trial of Elsie Rivera. Elsie Rivera goes on trial for the murder of her daughter Christie.
Dr. G's Forensic Challenge. Dr. G must explain the contradictions in the evidence to the jury.
The Mystery of Henry Clark's Death. Henry Clark, a seemingly healthy man, collapses at home, leading to a puzzling investigation.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

The physical abuse was immense.

Therese Huntzinger on the abuse suffered by Sandra and Christie.

9:25WatchMay 14, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.